


The Tale of Richard and Oliver or Rescuing a Princess: How Hard Can It Be?

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Top Gear (UK) RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-19
Updated: 2008-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon there lived a Prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of Richard and Oliver or Rescuing a Princess: How Hard Can It Be?

**Author's Note:**

> Dear shewhoguards - I hope you enoy this. It may not be quite what you were expecting, but hopefully it'll make you laugh.
> 
> Written for shewhoguards

 

 

Once upon a time there was a country where savage dragons roamed and strange sorcerers were apt to put dreadful curses on people at the drop of a pointy hat. In this country, there lived a King, and the King had a son who was most dear to him. Prince Oliver was a beautiful golden-haired child who had slowly grown into a good-looking young man. On his twenty-first birthday, the King threw a huge party for his son, as was the custom in those parts. Guests came from throughout the kingdom to see the Prince come of age. 

In the middle of the festivities, there was a sound like a thunderclap; rousing orchestral music filled the air and the sky grew dark. Suddenly, a tall figure, dressed all in black, appeared in the midst of the crowd. The King, seeing the figure, began to splutter and mumble. 'Lord Simon,' he began, cringing in front of the sorcerer, 'please, I beg you -'

'Having a party?' the man replied, gazing impassively at the other guests. 'Did my invitation get lost in the post, perhaps?' He raised one dark eyebrow.

The King began to shake. He briefly considered lying, but rightly guessed Lord Simon would know immediately. The truth was that no one was very fond of Lord Simon of Cowell. He was rumoured to be a dark sorcerer of some sort, and he would come to every party held in the land and sneer at the food and shout abuse at the entertainment. (One man had once suggested the witty put-downs and abuse were practised beforehand, and that some were even written by other people for Lord Simon to use. That man was now a frog, so unfortunately these accusations had never been verified.)

'As punishment for failing to invite me,' Lord Simon snarled, 'I will take away your most precious possession.' He pointed his wand at Prince Oliver.

The young man's skin began to bubble and he let out a shriek of terror. His arms began to swell and he dropped to all fours as the guests turned away in horror. When they dared to look again, the Prince was gone and in his place was a small yellow car. The King knelt beside it. 'Oliver? Is that you?'

In response, the horn gave a dejected parp and the headlights flashed. 

'Oliver will be banished to a tower.' Lord Simon laughed nastily. 'Until his true love, someone brave and virtuous, rescues him and defeats me. Then I will return him to his previous form.'

And with that, he swirled his cloak and disappeared. A few bars of O Fortuna lingered in the air for a second before shocked silence descended.

Oliver disappeared and a map shimmered in the air. It materialised as the King grabbed it and he saw it gave directions to the tower where his son was now imprisoned.

The King gave way to his grief for many weeks, eating and drinking barely anything and sending away all who tried to comfort him. Finally, he sent out a decree to all four corners of the land, calling for brave adventurers to rescue his son and offering half his kingdom and his son's hand in marriage as a reward for breaking Lord Simon's spell.

Sadly, though there were in those days many adventuring knights willing to rescue beautiful princesses from dragons or evil sorcerers, none responded to the King's plea. Why, they said, would they want to marry his son? It all seemed a little, well, homosexual, and most knights were very keen not to be called gay. (An uncharitable reader might reflect that men who spent most days polishing their armour, working on their hair and charging at each other while riding thrusting beasts and holding long jousting spears were likely to be rather defensive on this subject.) 

As this was a sadly backwards country, for all its enchantments, there were no intrepid female knights willing to try their hands at rescuing Oliver. This was partly, of course, because any young girl showing signs of independence was likely to annoy an enchantress sooner or later and thus end up in a tower herself. 

A year past, and the King began to despair of ever seeing his son again when one of the courtiers came to him with a name of a knight who might be able to help. This knight was known to be reckless to the point of insanity (there was a rumour he was actually swallowed by a dragon - some stories said nearly burnt alive - but was saved by the prompt actions of his comrades). Even better, this knight was said to be constantly short of cash and could usually be persuaded to do anything for money. So the king sent out a herald to find the knight and if possible bring him to the Kingdom.

A few days later, there was a trumpet blowing outside the castle and the King rushed to the battlements just in time so see the Knight's arrival. A huge prancing white horse with red trappings was making its way towards the castle. 

'Sir Richard of Hammond' the herald announced. The King rushed down to greet him.

'Sir Richard, I'm so very glad you could come,' he cried, craning his head so he could see the knight's face.

Sir Richard shrugged, 'Pleased to be here,' he replied. He jumped down from the saddle and the King had to suppress a laugh. On the ground, Sir Richard barely came up to his shoulder. 'My comrades are on their way,' Richard continued, 'but their mounts are slower than Dodge here,' he patted the horse's flank.

'Perhaps you would all do me the honour of joining me for dinner?' the King asked. 'Then tomorrow I can tell you all about what happened to my poor boy.'

Sir Richard seemed to think this an excellent idea and went to relax while the King waited for his companions. Before too long, two shapes could be seen upon the track \- a tall man riding a stocky donkey and another man, hair flying around his face like a cloud, sitting rather uncomfortably on his horse.

They drew closer and the King went forward to meet them. After being introduced as Jeremy de Clarkson, a minor Knight who nevertheless was the possessor of an enormous fortune but who grew bored managing his estates, and James Capillus Multus. James, the King couldn't help thinking, seemed friendly but oddly reserved, especially when compared with both his companions' boisterousness. 

Grooms sped forward to take away their steeds (Jeremy gave anxious directions about the care of his donkey, Kristen, while James murmured only that Panda, his horse, liked a nice lot of oats in the evening) and the King ushered his guests inside.

\---

The three men spent all the next day in council with the King but as the sun sank behind the distant hills, it had been decided that Richard (and his companions) would definitely go in search of Oliver, to rescue him if he could. The King handed over the map into their care and wished them all godspeed.

\---

'So, we're off to rescue some bloke who's been turned into a car, so Richard can marry him?' Jeremy asked as they rode out of the kingdom. 'Is it just me, or is this the stupidest idea he's ever had?'

'It's a bit gay...' 

'It's _Hammond_ , May. He bought a potion to whiten his teeth and paid some fairies to re-arrange his hair.'

James considered this. 'And it's just a car at the moment, so gender is probably pretty irrelevant. And you can't have sex with a car.'

Richard and Jeremy both flushed a deep red and became suddenly interested in the scenery.

Several hours of travelling later, after they'd thoroughly exhausted their repertoire of games and banter and had sunk into mildly irritable silence, Richard turned to where Jeremy was trudging along on Kristen's back.

'Jeremy? He asked tentatively, 'Do you have the map?'

'No, I gave it to you.'

'You did not.'

'Did so.'

'Don't worry. I've got it.'

'James! Jeremy - why the fuck did you give James the map?'

'I didn't. You had it so you must have given it to him. Don't let the logic break your brain.' Jeremy snatched the map out of James's hands and turned it the right way up. 'Ok. Miraculously, we seem to be all right for most of the way. There was a fork a while ago, and we're on the wrong path, but I don't think it'll take us long to go back.'

James, unperturbed by this development and knowing better than to claim he had been map-reading perfectly, started back the way they'd come, leaving Jeremy and Richard to follow behind, still bickering over who had been responsible for the map ending up with James. 

Late in the day, the three travellers saw a tower looming in front of them. 

'Right, chaps,' Richard said as he and Jeremy watched James putting up their tent, 'tonight, dinner and beer - tomorrow, the tower!'

\---

They had brought quite a lot more beer than was necessary (each certain the others would forget to pack any) and consequently it was rather later than they'd planned next morning before they awoke. Richard rubbed his head and started muttering about how the tower's protections had better not be dragons because his head was far too tender to deal with them. Jeremy declared, at his usual ear-splitting volume, that he felt as though a badger had shat in his mouth, which started James on a rambling lecture discussing how badger shit would actually have a very distinctive flavour because of badgers' unusually varied diets, until Jeremy cuffed him on the head and Richard threw a pillow at his head.

Eventually, they managed to pack everything up. James, though he usually tried carefully to conceal it in public, had some small magical talent and was able to shrink their baggage to a manageable size.

The tower loomed in front of them, surrounded by a thicket of thorns. They stood as close as they could get and craned upwards, looking for signs of life. 

'Why's it always fucking towers?' Richard complained, wondering if there was a way in or whether he'd have to climb the outside.

'Compensation complex.' James sniggered. 'My guess would be Lord Cowell's none too large in the gentleman's vegetable area.'

Richard raised an eyebrow. 'More stunted parsnip than bulging marrow?'

'That's Simon for you,' Jeremy chipped in, '... huge ego. Tiny cock.' The others turned to look at him. 'Er, so I've heard,' he added.

Richard changed the subject. 'So, huge thicket of thorns - can you magic 'em down?'

James glared at Richard and then shifted his gaze to the thorns. He muttered under his breath and waved his hands about, but nothing happened. Sighing, he went to the luggage and rummaged until he found a small bottle. He added a tiny briar from the horns and shook the mixture until it turned pink. A shade of pink last seen when the young Princess Petunia had asked her doting parents to provide a magic strawberry-flavoured, Barbie-themed cake with extra pink glitter and pink marshmallows. Jeremy stifled a snigger.

James threw the bottle as hard as he could into the thicket. They head the glass break and then...

'Ah,' James said. 'I really hoped that would do the trick. You see, the properties of the elixir combined with the catalyst of a piece of the magical plant-'

'Shut up, James,' Jeremy said, but he gave his friend a half-smile. 'I take it they're magic-resistant.' James nodded.

'So it's the old-fashioned way then?' Richard asked, drawing his sword with a flourish. He swiped at the nearest thorn bush and a twist of branches fell to the ground. 'There!' he cried, 'None of your hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo needed.'

There was a loud creak as the thorns began to grow back, filling the gap Richard had made and expanding towards his feet. Richard took a leap backwards as Jeremy began to laugh until he had to lean on James's shoulder for support.

'That's quite a common feature of this type of magic,' James said, not quite keeping the smugness out his voice. 'I was going to mention it, but you started waving your sword around. It might even be a no-blade-forged-by-human-hand sort of affair.'

Jeremy straightened up, wiping at his eyes. 'I've got an idea,' he said and ignored the others' groans. 'What if we cut faster than the thorns can grow back?'

'That would work...' Richard was enthusiastic, swinging his sword through the air to demonstrate how fast he could cut.

'Oh, put it away, Hammond. You'd get tired before we got even half way. You'd never cut quickly enough either.' Richard stuck his tongue out at James.

'What if... we had something with a bit more... power?' Jeremy was rooting in his bag and, after a moment or two, waved something triumphantly aloft. 'Behold!'

'Where the fuck did you get that?'

'And why the hell did you bring it with you?'

'There's a man on my estate who manufactures them,' Jeremy explained airily, 'and you never know when one'll come in handy... Like now,' he added pointedly.

'Did you bring petrol?' James asked. 'I don't think it would be a good idea to try to run it on magic.'

Further rummaging produced a large can of petrol. They took a few minutes to gather the essentials they thought they'd need inside the tower. Then Jeremy grinned and brandished his weapon.

'Let's get this show on the road!' he cried, and powered it up.

The air was filled with the metallic whine of an extremely powerful chainsaw.

'ISN'T SHE MAGNIFICENT!' Jeremy shouted over the noise.

Holding the chainsaw straight in front of him, Jeremy charged straight at the thorns, slashing his way through. Richard and James followed behind as quickly as they could, James muttering half-heartedly that if Jeremy tripped and chopped himself into mince it would serve him right for running with a chainsaw.

They arrived, panting, at the base of the tower after about five minutes' running. Jeremy switched off the chainsaw and as the adrenaline left him, he bent over and wheezed heavily. 'Too... old... for... this... shit...,' he gasped between breaths. 'Nonsense,' said James, who was equally out of breath.

Richard was examining the door, which was made of dark old wood that seemed to be absorbing all the light around it. 'Magic door,' he pointed out helpfully.

James - disguising the fact he still hadn't quite got his breath back - came over to look. 'I think it's just plain magic, not someone playing silly buggers with runes and riddles, which is a start. And it's real wood, which always makes a difference. I should be able to have it open in a minute or two.'

Jeremy wandered over to watch as James laid both hands on the wood and rested his forehead gently against the door. His breathing slowed and became deeper, more regular. Realising that nothing much was going to happen immediately, Richard went to walk around the base of the tower to see what he could find out.

Something was happening to the door; Jeremy could see it was starting to buckle at the hinges. James had nearly stopped breathing altogether and seemed to be in a trance. A small bud swelled just above where the doorknob would have been and burst into leaf. Soon, the door was sprouting leaves and small twigs and, with a loud crack, sprang away from its hinges and fell to the floor, writhing. Roots spread quickly into the ground. James swayed and would have fallen if Jeremy had not caught him in a hug.

'Always knew you were a closet hippy. The hair was a dead giveaway.'

James laughed. 'Better find Richard.' He turned away from the door to see where their younger companion had gone. 'Well, it looks as though breaking the spell on the door has dealt with the thorns, at least.'

The thicket had melted away to leave bare dirt and a few stunted patches of grass. Jeremy looked disappointed that he wouldn't need the chainsaw to get out. 'Richard!' he called. He and James turned, startled, when an answering yell from behind them.

'Oh, I see you got the door open?' Richard remarked, casually sheathing his sword. James and Jeremy stared at their friend, who seemed to have come from inside the tower. 'There was a ground floor window on the other side,' he explained. 'Classic error. Shall we go upstairs?'

They made their way slowly up the spiral staircase until they reached the top floor. Richard eyed the door warily, but James reached forward and turned the knob. The door creaked and swung open.

'You're the hero, you go first,' Jeremy encouraged cheerfully.

Putting up his chest a little, Richard walked into the room. Sunlight streamed in from high windows, highlighting beams of dancing dust. The room smelt mainly of dust, with a hint of petrol and old rubber. In the middle of the floor was a small yellow car.

'Isn't he _beautiful_ ,' Richard breathed, running a hand over the bodywork.

Jeremy had been inspecting the rest of the car. 'Bit beaten up,' he said, 'and the dash looks pretty old-fashioned. How long's it been asleep?'

'Not that long...' Richard said, puzzled.

'It's quite simple,' James explained from where he was standing by the window. 'Twenty-one is quite young for a person - a human person, I mean - but it's... well, it's getting on a bit for a car, especially if it's been put in stasis like this one and not run for a while.'

'Well, I think he's wonderful.'

'Oh God, Hammond's in love with it already.'

'With _him_ , Jeremy.'

'Better kiss it then, before you get over it.'

'I won't get-' but Richard saw it was pointless to argue. He knew how he felt. Aware that he looked slightly ridiculous, he bent over and placed his lips on the cold bonnet. There was a moment of awful silence, then the engine stuttered into life and the headlights turned on.

'He lives!' Richard yelled. Jeremy and James avoided each other's eyes, both on the verge of laughter. 'Don't worry, Oliver, we're here to rescue you. I've woken you up and now we just need to... oh.'

'Does anyone else hear music?' James said quietly.

Seconds later, Lord Cowell stood in front of them, his lip curled in its habitual sneer. 'I must admit, I'm actually quite impressed. I honestly never thought you'd get this far...'

Jeremy bristled. 'Well, we did. So turn that back into a man or whatever it is you promised and we'll be off.'

'I think not.' Cowell produced his wand and held it casually at his side. 'You have to rescue Oliver and defeat me to break the spell.'

'So killing you won't work?' Richard said, drawing his sword. Simon moved his wand in a flash and the sword melted into a grey puddle at Richard's feet.

'No. What sort of moron would make a curse that stopped when he died?'

Richard, seeing Jeremy and James moving in what they probably thought was a subtle way, yelled again. 'So you did all this just because you didn't get invited to a party? You do realise how desperate that makes you sound, right?' Beside him, Oliver flashed his lights and tooted his horn.

'Oh look, a double act. How sweet.'

Under the cover of Richard's banter, James had managed to creep up to Jeremy. 'If we defeat Cowell, I'm almost certain I can use his wand to end the spell,' he murmured. Jeremy looked incredulous and James tried his best to convince him. 'I think it's our best chance.'

Jeremy nodded and started looking for something heavy. He thought wistfully that it was a pity he'd left his chainsaw downstairs.

Simon seemed to be growing tired of Richard's bravado. He began to muse aloud that maybe he'd just kill Oliver after all. He'd always been an insipid little brat.

'Nonsense!' Richard cried. 'Just because he didn't want to be your friend. Shows bloody good taste, if you ask me-'

'-which I didn't,' Cowell pointed out.

'- and he's spirited and brave and... gorgeous!'

'If you say so,' Cowell sounded unconvinced and was studying his nails as though they were the most interesting thing currently in the room. 'Maybe I'll kill you then, you seem quite irritating.'

There was a sudden burst from a car horn and the screech of tyres. Oliver roared forwards, hitting Cowell straight on and sending him flying. At the same time, Jeremy, who had been looming behind Cowell waiting for his moment, brought down a wrench with as much strength as he could muster...

('Ah, bugger,' said Jeremy.)

... right on to Cowell's wand. The black rod shattered into dust and lay on the floor in a sad heap. 

'For fuck's sake.' James said, exasperated. 'I did say I should have done it. Your aim always was crap.'

'My aim was fine. It's not my fault the ruddy car took matters into its own hands.'

' _His_ hands. Er, wheels,' Richard interjected. 'And he's not a ruddy car.'

Oliver flashed his headlights fiercely.

'I suppose you can't do anything, James?' Jeremy asked.

James shook his head. 'This is out of my league,' he admitted. 'I doubt there's anyone in the land who could fix Oliver now.'

'He doesn't need fixing!' Richard burst out. 'He's perfect as he is. And I don't think Oliver minds being a car, I can tell.'

Oliver revved his engine enthusiastically.

'Oh Christ,' Jeremy moaned. 'They can communicate.'

'Soul mates,' James agreed.

After a bit of thought, James managed to get them all safely down to ground level and enlarge the door so Oliver could get out. Cowell, who had hit his head, was starting to come round, but apparently couldn't remember either who he was or what he was doing there. James sent a strange signal up into the air and a man dressed all in white materialised in front of them immediately. He never spoke, and his eyes were covered by a dark visor, but he picked Cowell up easily and slung him over his shoulder.

'He'll be looked after,' James said, though it must be admitted none of the others much cared what happened to Cowell, 'and Stig will make sure he doesn't do any more harm.'

Oliver gleamed a soft golden yellow in the sunlight and Richard cheerfully began telling him all about his castle, Hamelot, and the space there was there for them to roam about and the unused west wing which could easily be converted for Oliver's use and how Richard would soon have him back in perfect condition again. He was interrupted in his breathless monologue by Jeremy.

'Yes, Hammond. It's very important you get his motor running...'

James nodded seriously. 'Very important in a relationship, keeping someone's motor running. I expect all his moving parts will need some careful oiling as well.'

Jeremy gave a choked cough. 'But think how useful it'll be to have a sentient car. Any time you fancy a ride you can just get inside him -' he had to stop, cut off by James's laughter. Jeremy himself couldn't choke his own down any longer and soon both were in hysterics.

'Oh, sod off, you two,' Richard said cheerfully. 'Oliver and I are going home.'

And they all lived happily ever after. 

 


End file.
